This 50s film, made for teachers, documents the findings of research studies into the effectiveness of using educational films in the classroom. This is all presented very dryly, like the filmed version of an academic journal literature review. The ironic thing is that most of the studies find that films are very effective teaching tools, but youâd never know by the way this film was madeââitâs a sure cure for insomnia. The irony between form and content, as well as the visuals of 50s classrooms, make the film a little more interesting than it might be, but itâs still a snoozer.
Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

This instructional film made for teachers, is presaented in a very dry manner. The narrator is almost monotone. Direction lacked creativity.

Promotion/training(?) film aimed at teachers, emphasizing how educational films can enrich the teaching environment. One of the important historical contexts for this film is that audio visual aids were becoming more widespread in use, with the postwar reorganization of schools (see for example "The Sixth Chair") and lower costs of sound projectors.

The point of the film is how films can improve understanding at all grade levels, as demonstrated by pedological research. At the elementary levels, especially 2nd grade on up, films can provide visual understanding for increasingly sophicated concepts to facilitate reading. In middle and high school, films can help with portraying processes, especially in the sciences.

Unfortunately, the film is rather dry and seems cheaply made. The majority of the footage looks like stock of students of various ages in classrooms, interspersed with charts covering the results in various studies on the benefits of film in a particular instance. One particular shot of a high school age girl boredly watching a film is repeated three times during the run time. The soundtrack is simply a narrator reading very dry text done with a minimum of takes (you can hear obvious verbal stumbles), and no music at all. Even the opening title cards are repeated at the end. There are also subtle artefacts of the time period littered in the text. Elementary teachers are refered to by the use of the female pronoun, for example.

Interesting for those have an interest in pedogogy, but probably hopelessly dull for the general public.

In this curiousity, a film about WHY it's important for kids to watch films, proves the notion that, while films can be interesting to watch, films ABOUT WATCHING FILMS can be somewhat tedious and boring. Various charts are produced to hammer down over and over again, that films are much more interesting to watch then reading or a lecture. Various scenes of kids watching films are shown, and probably the only highlight of this opus is catching the interesting styles the kids were wearing in those dayze.